Delay-tolerant networking has been proposed for a variety of applications such as spanning the solar system in an interplanetary Internet, periodic delivery of news and financial information to rural communities via a network of bus-based or intermittently connected relays, or periodic exchanges of new music and exercise performance to and from a runner's MP3 player each day. Like a traditional Internet, a delay-tolerant network transmits packetized data over multiple hops. Unlike a traditional Internet, in a delay-tolerant network the entire path of a transmission does not have to be active at a given moment for transmission to occur. Rather than relying on the ability to rapidly transmit packets back and forth across a data path, a delay tolerant network opportunistically moves an entire semantic chunk of data (e.g., a file) one hop at a time, as links become available, in a store-and-forward manner.
Although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications, and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art.